$1m charge to hit air ambulance

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The Metropolitan Ambulance Service may be forced to cut services or increase the cost to patients because of airport charges that will add $1 million a year to the cost of its air service.

Air Ambulance Victoria, which is operated by the MAS, will have to pay almost 700 per cent more in airport charges if the proposed changes are approved by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. Under the proposal by Airservices Australia - a Federal Government agency that provides air traffic services to airports - the cost of landing at Air Ambulance Victoria's base at Essendon Airport would rise from $7.42 to $59 per tonne.

MAS's general manager for operations, Ian Patrick, said the changes would put extra financial pressure on the service at a time when it was negotiating an enterprise bargaining agreement with staff.

"Somewhere we have to find $1 million," he said. "This whole thing is about equity access for patients, and there's no way known we can pass this cost directly on to each patient."

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Victorian Health Minister Bronwyn Pike will write to federal Transport Minister John Anderson to request that the service be exempt from the rise in charges.

Mr Patrick said the service may be forced to increase patient charges and ambulance membership fees or cut services to cover the extra costs.

"If we don't get funding for it somewhere, you'd have to look at what you can and can't provide... maybe you would end up cutting services. We'd hope that would be a last resort for us, but somehow the $1 million has to be found."

Air Ambulance Victoria transports about 6000 patients a year, mostly from rural areas to Melbourne hospitals. While costs at Essendon Airport, where it is based, would rise by 695 per cent if the changes went ahead, the costs at Melbourne Airport would rise only 13.3 per cent, from $3.45 to $3.91.

"Commercial airlines with the big turnover are less affected than someone like us, who carry patients around," Mr Patrick said.

If approved by the ACCC, the new charges will take effect in October. A big factor in the price rise is the Federal Government's decision to end an annual $7 million subsidy for general aviation and regional airports.

A spokesman for Mr Anderson, Paul Chamberlin, said airport charges had been kept "artificially low for some time".

"The industry has known for many years that the subsidy would be ending," he said, although he added that the Federal Government would "consider very closely" Ms Pike's request for an exemption.

Ms Pike's spokesman, Ben Hart, said it was "completely unacceptable for the Federal Government to be ripping $1 million out of Victoria's ambulance system".

He said the Federal Government should compensate the ambulance service if it did not grant the exemption.